The Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program (ICIP) program provides property tax breaks to companies that construct or renovate property in most areas of New York City. For years GJNY has urged officials to rethink this program. Then, thanks mostly to a 2008 report by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office, ICIP was reauthorized as the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program or ICAP in 2008. Now utilities are exempt and benefits for some retailers and property owners in parts of Midtown and Lower Manhattan are have been reduced for future applicants.

But even with these reforms the program has moved far from its 1970’s original intent to help manufacturers expand in the outer boroughs, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. “This is one of the weirdest exemption programs ever devised,” Borough President Stringer told the Daily News after learning about the strip club subsidies.